ESPN's Rachel Nichols on NY Giants, Super Bowl, Social Media, Sideline Etiquette

Rachel Nichols joins the show from somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, covering the New York Giants on their somewhat improbable run to the Super Bowl. Nichols has been with the Giants during their playoff run, but was also with the team the last few weeks of the season. Does she feel like a beat writer at this point? Does she have Giants Stockholm Syndrome after spending so much time with the players? 

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We go into some depth on how Nichols covers her assignments -- looking for the best stories to tell with less of a focus on breaking news than some of the other reporters covering that team. We talk specifically about her piece on Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul, where Nichols told the story of his father who became blind when Pierre-Paul was just a baby. I ask how a story like that ends up on the air -- does someone in Bristol assign here that specific story or is she given a little more free reign to find and report stories like that, given her task of covering the Giants? 

As a former beat writer for the Washington Post, Nichols tries to take a more newsy approach to asking question in her features, so I ask if she finds people more or less forthcoming when a TV camera is present. Look, every athlete or coach talks off the record, but is that possible when there's a camera rolling? Or, do the cameras benefit her because people are more prone to show some personality for a camera than a tape recorder?

Speaking of personalities, we get into a conversation about social media and how, from a journalistic standpoint, it's great that athletes feel the need to express themselves. While it's good for the media, is it good for the players? Do players have a tendency to share a bit too much these days and do we, in turn, search for even more than before?

We touch on the Tim Thomas snub of the White House invitation to be honored with the rest of the Boston Bruins as well as former Giants wide receiver David Tyree reportedly telling reporters on a conference call on Tuesday why he doesn't support the gay marriage bill. How in the world did that come up on a conference call with Tyree two weeks before the Super Bowl? 

"Please, tell us more about that one time you caught that one big pass on your helmet…and that's really the only reason we wanted to talk to you." 

We talk about the Pope telling us we should all tweet less:

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"Joy, anxiety and suffering can all be communicated in silence - indeed it provides them with a particularly powerful mode of expression.

"By remaining silent, we allow the other person to speak, to express him or herself, and we avoid being tied simply to our own words and ideas without them being adequately tested," he said."

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We also talk about the nature of Twitter and 24/7 news cycles and how difficult it is for news breakers to be "first" anymore, when people online (read: people like us) take notice of who broke a story by a matter of seconds. This is framed within the context Joe Paterno's passing, which turned into an entirely separate story about media, ethics and the growing need to break news before you verify it.

We talk about the recent kerfuffle over Holly Rowe "boxing out" another reporter during a bowl game on ESPN. Nichols and I talk about Rowe's responsibility at that moment and discuss why people were so up in arms about the way she handled the situation. It's one thing to make a joke about Rowe's ability to get past other reporters, but it's another to turn it into a rant – which some media people have done – about ESPN paying for the right to have first access and a general disrespect for print media.

ESPN did pay for that right. They paid millions of dollars to televise that and other games, and part of those rights fees include first dibs at on-field interviews. Every reporter who has ever worked a game knows that, so to blame Rowe for getting the interview she was contractually obligated to get is taking a shot at her, and ESPN, that's completely misplaced.

Last, after I get off my soapbox and Nichols gives a great explanation of the way the post game on-field interviews are supposed to go, we talk about her plans for the Super Bowl and what she has lined up for the next few weeks. Also, I beg her not to tweet about how cold it is or how much traffic the media bus is in.

Nobody cares. You hear that Super Bowl media? Nobody cares.

Thanks as always for listening.